


Dyeing at Home

by wrabbit



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Pre-Slash, Sherlock is Ginger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-26
Updated: 2011-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:29:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit/pseuds/wrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mrs Hudson dispenses hair care and some advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism: Welcome

Sherlock sighed as Mrs. Hudson rubbed her fingers into his scalp over the sink. "There, there, dear," she was saying. She guided his head under the running water with a surprisingly strong grip on the nape of his neck. "I'm sure he's already forgiven you."

"I don't need forgiveness!" Sherlock's eyes shot open and then blinked shut as his face was momentarily overcome by streaming water as Mrs. Hudson pulled him out from under the faucet. "If anything he should be apologizing to me."

"For what, dear?"

"For running off with another useless, air-headed -" Sherlock hissed as his skin was pinched briefly but sharply. "In the middle of a crime scene!"

"I won't have you speaking bad about John's girl, whatever her name is," Mrs. Hudson reprimanded. She set about wringing his hair out and urging him to sit up. "Let them have their fun."

Sherlock frowned at her, dripped on the carpeting. "Oh, Sherlock. Over here now."

Sherlock followed her disconsolately into the kitchen where she set him on a low chair and opened a window before sitting down to begin preparing the hair dye. "She's not even fucking him yet. And after that, then what?" Sherlock muttered.

"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson shook her head and squeezed another color into the mix. A few minutes later, "What about that dashing police inspector?"

"Lestrade?" Sherlock glanced up from his phone. "What about him?"

"He's nice. Good looking, too."

Sherlock frowned a bit more. He sighed deeply as Mrs. Hudson finally pulled a pair of plastic gloves over her hands and moved to stand behind him.

"How has my life become this tawdry melodrama, Mrs. Hudson?"

"Your roots are showing," Mrs. Hudson was muttering. "What was that, dear? Oh, Sherlock, you really should let me do your eyebrows," she said, looking over him in the kitchen mirror.

He batted her hand away from his face. "I said, what should I do?"

"Well you know what I always say," she said.

"What's that?"

"What wouldn't Mr. Hudson do."

Sherlock grinned into the mirror.

"Devious," she chided.

"I am devious!"

"Take him to another crime scene. He'll like that. You look like you need a new case yourself, dear. Shall we do your nails next?"

Sherlock looked down at them. "Yes, if you think it necessary."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Hudson does Sherlock's nails and John is cheating on Sherlock with the other tenants.

Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock both stared at Sherlock's nails between them. "How's Mrs. Turner?" Sherlock asked.

Mrs. Hudson ignored his tone. "Talking a storm up about your John," she said. "Never felt stronger, she says."

Sherlock grimaced.

"Don't begrudge him being useful. A man like that needs something to do." She pulled his hand closer, a cuticle pusher wielded agilely in one hand.

"He's useful to me!" Sherlock complained. "I found him first."

"Oh, Sherlock."

"Well he's certainly not your plumber, or whatever it is you have him doing now. Surely he's already made up the rent we owe and more. What is it that plumbers make these days?"

"John's a good man," Mrs. Hudson said. "He thought the tubs needed recaulking," she explained. "I told him it wasn't necessary, but he'll save me having to have it done with everything and you know later."

She lifted Sherlock's hand off the table as if to propose him in marriage. "Would you like to choose a color?" She raised an eyebrow.

"The usual," Sherlock said. "Protective coat only." Mrs. Hudson sighed and lifted the nail oil.

"If you insist, dear," she said.

"I do. I'm sure it will become relevant some day, just to please you," Sherlock conceded after a moment.

"I know just the shade."

"I'm sure you do."

They both looked up at the sound of a pair of familiar uneven footsteps coming down the hall. "Mrs. Hudson, have you seen my - Oh, hello." Johns eyes went wide as he turned the corner into the kitchen, white paint and caulk streaking his jeans and ripped t-shirt. "What are you - are those curlers?"

Sherlock glowered as John's face broke into a slow grin and a hand over his mouth failed to muffle his frankly childish giggling.

"Get out, John!" he shouted.

John doubled over.

"OUT."

"Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson gentled him with a thumb over his knuckles.

"This is healing nicely," Mrs. Hudson said minutes later, when John's intermittent hysteria could no longer be heard next door. She ran her thumb over the place where a pen knife had been stopped, painfully, by Sherlock's thumb nail. "Must have had a good doctor."

There was an audible snorting hardly disguised by a forced coughing fit as John walked stiffly past the kitchen doorway, caulk in hand.

"He needs discipline," Sherlock growled.

"I've some windows that need cleaning," Mrs. Hudson suggested.

"Perfect."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock channels his inner movie star and John is impertinent.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," John sang and rapped his knuckles on the door.

"Go away!" Sherlock shouted and turned off the hair dryer. Still no change.

"Out or I piss in a beaker," John said. Sherlock could hear him leaning on the door, probably pressing his ear to it. "What are you doing in there?"

"Nothing."

"Can I pee while you do nothing?"

"No!" The door seemed to sigh.

"Sherlock," it crooned. Sherlock frowned and tapped it sharply with a hairbrush. He didn't like doors talking to him.

"Ouch," it said. "Alright, I'm coming in."

Sherlock jumped back, alarmed, at the sound of metal shifting unbidden in the doorknob. It turned and the door swung open abruptly.

"Key," John said and lifted it. "Ohhhh my god."

John's reaching hand was undeterred by Sherlock's most dangerous glare. He delicately tugged a ringlet out to its full length and released it, at which point Sherlock snapped as well and used John's own rebellious hand to cover John's own mouth.

"Not a word," Sherlock growled, crowding John out the doorway, "will be said. I was given some bad advice from a stylist, that is all."

John's eyes shone as he fought for hitching breaths behind his and Sherlock's hands. Sherlock kept him gagged at risk of suffocating him for several long seconds as he maneuvered it so that he was standing outside the door and John inside. "Shhh," Sherlock said and slowly released him.

John held up a finger as he breathed, one hand over his diaphragm. Sherlock waited as John attempted to apologize a few times only to decide he needed to lean against the door frame and catch his breath some more.

"Did you mum," John started and Sherlock frowned with apprehension, "call you Shirley Holmes?"

Sherlock growled and lunged for the front of John's jumper, intending to drag him to the ground and do something horrid, but John shrugged him off with a quick movement and wheezed, flailing for the door, "No, no, I really need to piss!"

The door slammed under the weight of John's shoulder and John slid down it, laughing hysterically on the other side, somehow still managing the mind and muscle control to turn the lock.

"Don't worry," Sherlock said into the wood as John finally calmed down enough to stand, "I can wait."

"Ohhh, god."


End file.
